Clive Palmer: National Treasure?

G’day guys and gals. Sorry for the hiatus, I’ve been too busy making excuses, and its been a slow news week besides. I just though I’d tell you a few quick thinks about our dear collective amigo, Clive Palmer, declared a National Treasure by Woman’s Day and therefore apparently some sort of cultural folk hero who specialises in gallantly destroying world heritage areas and destabilising governments.

Clive Palmer, Australian millionaire mining magnet and apparent national treasure is a hero. If you haven’t been blessed with the giddy pleasure of having witnessed him on Australia’s nightly news bulletins, he basically just loves calling press conferences and announcing things. Just like Spiderman’s sticky hand juice, and Batman’s cape and lycra fetish, it’s a vital part of his superhero persona. He successfully revealed to us the astonishing revelation that Greenpeace and the Greens are run by the CIA, he’s starting up a rival football federation to counter Lowy’s evil heartless commu-facists. He’s going to rebuild the Titanic, discover the lost city of Atlantis and presumably perform a duet with Gina Rinehart on the ship’s very prow, a premiere of Gina’s latest spoken word piece about the evils of regulating business and the need for Third world slave labour. Celine Dion eat your heart out.

Is there anything more that our dear, heroic national treasure can offer this country. The short answer is yes. He’s going to run for parliament, in Treasure Wayne Swan’s seat of Lilley, and perform a heroic public service for the national good.

Okay. Let’s depart from that for a second and take a more serious tack. Now this bloke isn’t your run of the mill Vermin Supreme, your satirical, attention seeking 4chan troll. He may be ridiculous, but he’s kind of dangerous. Like our dear friend Gina he’s got an agenda, namely “cutting red tape” or more accurately giving free run of the country to the super rich like himself. At the moment, gaining favourable preselection for the seat of Lilley is seeming remote, but I assure you, should he gain it and anymore influence, it would be a dark day for our supposedly egalitarian society. People like Mr Palmer and Ms Rinehardt are like poison within our system, using their immense wealth, built up via exploitation and inheritance to alter the flow of opinion and change political decisions in their favour, be it to deregulate business, encourage socially conservative views, or skew the “debate” on anthropogenic climate change. The consolidation of the power should be rightly feared, and opposed at every turn. Robber barons should not, nor ever be, a part of Australian society.

Redskins: Socialist Punk

What’s this? This is the Redskins, one of the best political punk bands of the 1980s. The Redskins fought Nazi and far right skinheads, racial prejudice and the Thatcher government through their actions and their lyrics, set against the turbulent backdrop of the British miner’s strike. This song, Lev Bronstein, condemns the Soviet Union, lauds the Solidarity movement in Poland and evokes the memory of that decisive and divisive ideological figure, Leon Trotsky. Have a listen. Check out more of their songs. They’re quite awesome.

Cut To The Credits

It’s finally finished, the Mid-Course exams that have plagued me like Russian tourists plague the children of the Nile are over. I apprehensively started Modern History, moved on to the dynamo of stress which was Advanced History and then relaxed dramatically for a one hour story about internally machinations in a socialist UK for Extension 1. The angst meter dipped up briefly for German, before finally coming through to French, which was passed with a sense of confidence and a relieved smile with thanks to a certain blogger.
Five days, five exams, and now before me, like the open sea, three weeks of free, stressless time. What shall I do with this time? That is a question that will need answering in the near future, and I’m inviting suggestions from all you guys out there, because I’m stumped.

But the post about that particular dilemma is several days in the future. For this is the part of the movie where we fade out, and cut slowly to the credits, several marching lines of black text, overlain with some ancient classic. Cue cultural cringe!

Procrastination

Like that mythical yet unknown teenager so long ago, procrastination will be the death of me. I’m addicted to it. I can’t stop. Invades my every waking moment. Every time I get home, every time I’m alone with nothing to do, I begin. I hold nothing sacred, I think about nothing else. I have a problem.

The Mid-Course Exams for Year 12 are rearing their ugly head like neatly categorised toothed dolphins. You may not think that’s ugly, but imagine dolphins with teeth for a second, and like the British Empire in Harry Turtledove’s Worldwar series, I’m sure you’ll come around to my way of thinking. The Mid-Courses are here on Monday and I’ve got to study. I’ve got to write two practice exams at least, one for English and one for History, and added to that complete the backlog of German work that I’ve been neglecting via correspondence. To be fair I have excuses to rationalise my behaviour.

I don’t feel to well. I have a headache. My throat’s sore. What she said really hurt me and I need some time to recover. I feel fat! Leave me alone!

But really. Essays are harder to write than a blog post or a story. You need evidence. You need to read two texts, comb them for quotes and specific stylistic features and shiz, formulate them into structured and orderly paragraphs (Topic, Example, Explanation), then arrange those paragraphs in a way that misdirects the hapless marker into thinking you have some grasp of logic, and can think coherently. It’s nearly impossible. I prefer to go back to my work writing a post-apocalyptic surrealist stream of consciousness romp through the British Orient.

And as for the German homework. I’ve explained the unique mindbending features of the German language on another post. Besides, I have to log into some internet site and listen to RP accented folks speak to me for half an hour to complete the required task. That comes under my definition of cruel and unusual torture. Lol jokz. Love you guys xox.

So instead of making a productive use of a beautiful Saturday morning, here I am. On the computer, switching back and forth, birdlike between a ten year old strategy game and the twisted gaudy wonders of the internet. I am procrastinating. This infection, this disease infects my life like the spread of neoliberalism across the Western world after the collapse of the Soviet bloc. I can’t get out of bed. I can’t be bothered going for a run. Homework is left in a tattered pile within my schoolbag. And I’m feeling the effects.

Like a conscientious Russian housewife, my taught athletic frame is collecting flab in strategic places. I’m falling behind in certain subjects, and every day I put off my required tasks to listen to eighties music and sleep. I know of course where this will all lead. I’ll be unhealthy, stupid and hopeless, crying naked in my bedroom, listening to an Adele, album with a cardboard cask of wine in my hands, surrounded by stray cats.

But I know how to stop this! How to take control of my life! I just need to get stuck in! Je fais m’y mettre! I need to get up early and stop watching reruns of Torchwood! (I’ll have to get my daily dose of homoerotic violence somewhere else instead) I need to start an exercise routine! Run to Buladelah and back with twenty kilo weights on each arm! I need to dive into my schoolwork with joy and panache! That’s it! Routine! Order! I will become the master of my own existence via the divine force of free will!

In a minute.

Those Woisterous Bankers: Westpac

Westpac are being bastards.

Firstly let me just say I am allowed to use the word bastard. I myself am a bastard, I’ve grown up in the bastard community, having been absorbed in the distinct bastard culture since birth, some of my best friends are bastards. And so I feel justified in using this word, long since used to oppress me and my kind, on any legitimate bastard I like.

Westpac certainly has earned the title. For news has filtered in that this certain perfidious bank is cutting hundreds, and possibly thousands of employees in cost cutting measures, not only this, but is forcing their redundancy-row employees to train their new subcontinental replacements. Stinge right? Lets examine this in two bite sized chunks.

Firstly, does Westpac really need to cut costs? Perhaps I’m being a little too harsh. I must admit, my ideology and a certain listless anger at the world, probably stemming from my woeful performance in the bedroom mean I’m usually less than pleased with extreme capitalism and corporations. I will however force myself to be fair. Westpac CEO defends her own salary quite smoothly bellow by not really answering the question. Further down is my video response.

Westpac has had a bad couple of years. What with the GFC, their takeover of St. George Bank, further tightening competition in the banking sector, and their getting rid of bad debts, they only raked in a measly 6.691 billion this year after the evil government taxman stole their hard earned dollars away. With such a small profit margin it’s only natural for Westpac to cut jobs for the greater good. I mean, I can barely pay for a week’s meals with that amount of money, and I don’t feast on the platters of caviar, and Ibex liver which ensure the mental precision required to run such a successful small business as their’s.

And one can only applause, I suppose, the humanity the Westpac board is displaying by giving jobs to those unwashed heathens on the subcontinent. It’s heartening to know that even though the Empire is dead, we can still use good cheap labour from the old Raj to do the jobs that Australians don’t want to do, and apparently the ones we do want to do as well. Of course Westpac probably had the interests of the worker’s at heart here. Giving them decent wages might anger their fellow citizens, provoking violent riots. Alternatively the extra cash might fatally destabilise their robust economy, provoking a global monetary apocalypse, in which Godzilla will return, breed with Mothman and overrun the world with dragons.

Secondly, and this is the part that gained most of the media attention, the whole getting sacked employees to train their new replacements is kind of stinge. Imagine it, seriously, having to regurgitate years of knowledge, spending hours with your usurper buzzing around you like a fly, asking questions and taking notes, in full knowledge that Westpac have not only pushed you off the plank. They’re making you dig your own grave… The folks apparently don’t like it so much. I can’t imagine why.

 ”She has been shadowing me, sitting next to me and I have to teach her how to do my day-to-day job,” Westpac staffer of 15 years, Russell Siachico, told The Sunday Telegraph. “Basically sitting next to me like a sponge, sucking in as much information as possible. It’s devastating. I feel insulted and very low.”

The reason why this has caused so much outrage (well not that much outrage but still a tad of bother), is simple. Westpac is the second biggest bank in Australia, one of the Four “Big Banks” or “Pillars” in the Australian banking sector. The Big Four, that includes Westpac, are now all rated in the top twelve banks in the world, after the global economic implosion of 08. They’re raking in massive profits, yet still they see the need to cut costs and “restructure”. They’ve only sacked 188 people so far, but the plans include up to 2000 more according to the evil unions.

The fact is that this sort of behaviour is inevitable. We have a system and a culture here based on endless growth, on the continually maximisation of profits. The goal of all these CEO types is to achieve these ends. The downsizing and mechanisation of their work forces at the expense of jobs will be as much as modern technology allows, as much as is seen viable by the board and investors. It’s the nature of the (relatively) free market economy, it’s the nature of the beast. A ravenous, fickle, bloated beast left unshackled and untamed for far too long. The answer should be simple. Rise up, cut the food supply and fetch the collar.

To see source and read more check out these corporate puppets: http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/ultimate-insult-sacked-westpac-workers-forced-to-train-indian-replacements/story-e6freuy9-1226250331599

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/more-news/rubbing-salt-into-sacked-workers-wounds/story-fn7x8me2-1226250342880

http://www.newstrackindia.com/newsdetails/2012/01/22/261893-Sacked-Westpac-workers-forced-to-train-their-Indian-replacements-.html

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatches/globalpost-blogs/down-under/australian-banks-india-outsourcing-call-centers-bangalore-global-financial-crisis

http://www.westpac.com.au/docs/pdf/aw/ic/2011_Annual_Report.pdf

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banking_in_Australia

I’m Forming A Gang!

The headline was alarmist. It’s a lot more complex and tasteful than that. Basically, I have a utopian vision for this year. It’s my New Year’s Resolution. I want to come together with my comrades here and form a glorious syndicate of awesomeness, in our ultimate year of high school. To not waste this precious time, this time of growth and youthful power, and begin already the sort of Nieztchian transformation from socially backward, kind of spindly, teenagers to supermen, warrior-poets in the tradition of Che Guevara, Conan the Barbarian and Doctor Who. Rawr. And play the songs as you read the paragraphs. It helps to create mood. Wow. This is so arthouse.

Firstly we shall become fit in terms of a physical sense and that. We shall go down to the gym centre and train in the arts of boxing and lifting heavy objects, such as shops. Hah. Combined with Taekwondo and constantly attacking each other with blunt objects, this training system will make us invincible fighting machines capable of incapacitating rabid dogs and massaging them until they feel a little better, than training them, through a positive reinforcement system, to become entirely loyal to us, whereupon we shall release them on unfortunate hipsters who’ve migrated here, like bearded bespectacled, little hat wearing geese from the freezing dystopia of Melbourne. In self-defence of course.

Apart from dog training, we shall participate in apolitical Long Marches, trekking through forests rugged and wild, across vast dunes of crystals sands and through thick fetid swamps that may or may not be haunted by the ghosts of Elvin warriors. Probably not though. We shall become one with the esoteric universality of nature, exchanging our individualities for a pantheistic group consciousness and becoming attuned to the natural rhythm and reverberation of Mother Earth. This will probably help build rock hard thighs and attract chicks.

Added to this will be a band. A post punk leftist ska fusion outfit called, the Ancient Tongues of Isis or Deadly Supermarkets Breed Discontent. We’ll play gigs and sing of deep rooted psychological angst, the inherent corruptedness of the societal order and a group of ducks that live in a little pond by Sydney University, the one right across from Broadway, and the Portuguese chicken shop.

But the two best features will be our vehicles, for that features most prominently in my vision. About a half dozen of us, riding in either a Lada Niva, or the back of a Kombi, all decked up in either suits and bow ties, or leather jackets, armed with bows and arrows and with Pendulum and Presets blaring loud over the speakers. We shall be able to take on any reactionary louts with our weapons, training and numbers, and we shall be irresistible to the opposite sex with our deadly combination of style, intelligence, masculinity, and sheer resplendent glory. Cue next song…

From there on we shall ride into eternity, myths and legends set against a melancholy sky, defining our own existences and riding out the oncoming apocalypse with panache. It may seem far-fetched, it may seem like so much smoke in front of those mirrors at carnivals that distort things and make you look humorously fat, but I’m putting this proposal to the lads tomorrow. Hopefully when I next speak the transformation will be underway.

Sydney: Part One

Sydney? Me and you need to have a talk.

That’s sounds really stupid and passe and whatnot, but it is fundamentally true. I went down to Sydney last week, (as you may have noticed from one of my previous posts, if you pay any sort of attention) and it’s left me all contemplative and melancholy. Like my first, last and probably only failed relationship, I’m filled with things I feel I need to say, questions I need to ask, and I… can’t stop thinking about you. Sydney, I may have anthropomorphised your sprawling brick and glass, dirty, urban acres into an ex-girlfriend, but please don’t be offended. My intention was not to diminsh. Besides, me and my ex get on great.

Let me just set the scene. I am, at heart, a country lad. I’ve been living in this charming parochial backwater for five years now, and while I did spend some time in the ‘big smoke’ when I was a wee lad, I was born in said parochial backwater too. My English teacher would probably ask me to relate this back to the concept of Belonging but I’ve got better things to do. Like procrastinate with both hands.

So my return to the gleaming heart of capitalism which is Sydney’s CBD was like a sort of anonymous prodigal son/messiah figure returning to his place of ascenscion. The fact that I was with two hundred of “me mates” did however dampen the sombre mood. I will go through a number of topics which hit as I traversed through the urban landscape.

I Posed One Legged On Those Stairs There

Buildings

That was the first thing I thought of. Apart from sex. There’s so many of them. A lot of them are really tall and made of glass, and some of them are odd shapes (I’m looking at you Opera House). The ramifications of these simple facts are wide ranging. When I walk through the ancient streets of old Sydney Town, down George Street where my forefather’s got pissed and traded the stockmarket in an ever repeating cycle, down Pitt Street where my relatives still toil, I am affected with a certain feeling. That folks is apathy. The whole scene is so… big that my mind just goes ‘kewl buildings’ and blocks most things out. I walk zombie like through the place, guiding my compatriots to places I hardly knew existed, while a strange undercurrent runs through the back of my head, like a leaking septic line saying “Shit..”

People

Sydney people are weird. There’s two things you need to learn about Sydney people. There’s a whole lot of them, over four million, and lots of them are foreigners of the mustachioed and non-mustachioed type.

They also can be quite rude. One thing Sydney people could learn to do is be polite. Up hear in the sparkling Great Lakes, when one person sees another on the street the common thing to say is something along the lines of the cliched, yet still extensively used ‘G’day’, or at least a curt nod. When purchasing things in the local trans-national super conglomerate of your choice country folk use manners, and sometimes even attempt to formulate highly mundane conversation. Sydney folk don’t. Perhaps it’s due to the fact that curtly nodding at everyone you meet in the street on a trip from Martin Place to Darling Harbour would probably severly damage your spinal cord. Perhaps its the fact that everyone’s suffering from the building affect.

Admire the Wit and Artistic Skill of this Map's Maker

People (Part Two) Race

It certainly isn’t foreigners, no matter what Pauline Hanson tries to ‘exploin’ to you. Once my mum almost hit a Subcontinental woman over the head with an umbrella. The woman was neurotically cheerful about the whole situation, insisting that the whole affair was nothing, and that Jihad was totally unneccessary, banishing all of my stereotypes to the darkness of the Netherlands. Admittedly the whole Jihad question was a little stupid on my behalf, but I was younger then.

I don’t fawn over Multiculturalism like all those other neoliberal bleeding heart hipsters, mostly because I try to be an internationalist when I can, and am probably a closet Fascist, but I do value it immensely. It’s one thing I love about Sydney. An aspect of multi culturalism I don’t like is the phenonemon of ethnic ghettoes. An entire suburb overwhelmingly dominated by Lebanese, bordering one dominated by Vietnamese and then one dominated by Anglos reminds me more of Northern Ireland than a classless, raceless utopia.

But birds of a feather flock together, and although people aren’t birds, neither are ducks. I’m talking about the whole webbed feet business. Mercifully the CBD, as the hub of the entire city is actually an example of the ‘melting pot’ multiculturalism’s all about. Or is that assimilation? That’s bad. Refer to the Borg.

Here Endeth Part One…

You Say Gang, I Say Subculture

I am currently typing from the Bieber-bedecked bedroom of my tweenage cousin, in a particularly unremarkable suburb of Sydney. I’m itinerant like that. A sort of nomad who travels by bus and peak hour trains. Most nomads don’t really do that, granted. I mean they sort of get about using in yurts and Bactrian camels across wide tractless steppe, Tuvan throatsinging ominously into the star filled skies. But I’m not really that cool. I’m a twenty first century nomad who travels by freezing buses and interstate trains that smell of cigarettes and vomit. I get my food from monolithic fast food franchises and small shops near suburban railway stations. And I can only do basic throatsinging.

Naturally this series of unfortunate events have driven me to a state of deep existential angst, where my primal desires for something real, a sense of community and probably sex have made me become disenfranchised with society. What shall I do? Listening to the Safety Dance at ear damaging levels, growing my hair long and frequently procrastinating have only lead to several appointments with the local doctor and the quiet disdain of some of my teachers. I must do something more drastic. I must form a gang.

Why not become a Lad? Suggests some complete idiot whose probably related to me. There’s plenty of them, they’re totes tough and they already have a reputation for acting like dickheads and episodes of random wanton violence. That’s all very well, I counter, except it goes against all of the values I have, and everything I hold dear. Seriously, if I wanted to turn my body into advertising space for multinational corporations and attack passers-by, I’d become a billboard or a violent schizophrenic. If anything I want to form a gang that goes against the Lad concept. Anti-materialist and mutual defence rather than recreational violence. If you’re not from Australia and have no idea what I’m talking about check this informative video. Or this short unrefined video that contains lots of fighting and stuff for all of you troglodytes out there.

Lads. How Bloody Wonderful.

Tall order? You ask sceptically, and why do you keep asking rhetorical questions? Luckily I watched a French documentary about a socialist street gang in the ‘70s last night. So I now have all the know-how and motivation to do it. I will outline my method so perhaps you can replicate it, and share this rich and wholesome experience with the collection of associates our vain materialistic society conveniently labels friends.

1. Get tough and whatnot.

Real gangs possess a sort of physical strength and presence that me and my ‘friends’ simply don’t have. The answer: Get tough. We’re going to start going to the gym, and bench pressing scantily clad women and exercise bikes with a previously dictated selection of our ten fingers. I said this because that’s pretty much the only things I’ve found at my local gym that are heavy enough to lift and look tough doing. We’ve already organised. Me and me mates are going to do boxing, running on the beach, stretches and shiz and cage fighting juvenile bears. Also taekwondo. By the end we should be so damn awesome we’d be able to take on any of the other measly gangs and groups that operate in our little town with contemptuous ease. We’ll also be able to take on the Lads, depending how many of them there are. I hear they hang outside shopping malls searching for brand name clothing and funny looking people to abuse. We’ll put a stop to that. But being tough and whatnot is only a small part of being a gang. The other part is collectivism. Yay! Collectivism!

2. Look

The coolest gangs wear clothes and stuff that marks them out from all the common wimpy bourgeois mainstream folk and the other gangs. I’m thinking practically, as I always do. It’s going to be based upon plain clothes, things easy to obtain like a White T-Shirt and jeans. We’d also wear a vintage coat or something, coz vintage is cool, and a little accessory, like a red sash or button to go over the top. We’ve got to look tough, yet sophisticated, yet also resplendent. We also need a hair style. I’m going to make it longish hair because I’ve got longish hair and I can’t be bothered cutting it. I might not even worry about the hair. I’ll ask me mates about it. Any which way it doesn’t matter, we can’t look as ridiculous as Lads. Rats tails and singlets? It’s like being Bogan without Cold Chisel, which is almost impossible and defeats the purpose of the Bogan.

Cold Chisel Is Playing In the Background

3. Music

We need a distinctive style of music to listen to. The mods had New Wave, the punks had… punk and the skinheads had ska and then stupid reactionary rubbish about hating foreigners. In sharp contrast the new ‘Lad’ subculture cannot be said to have anything resembling music at all. At the moment I’m split between dubstep and Celtic punk. We might have to fuse both. We can also write our own music, giving us more street cred, money and women. Ok, that may go against my values, but I’m allowed to be hypocrite right?

4. Name

We need a good gang name a stirring, emotive name that’s easy to say and is imbued with hidden verbal power. Like a domesticated ferret, our gang name must have the power to both threaten and comfort the elderly. Having the definite article (for all of you fools out there that means ‘the’) does make you seem bold and definitive, but also risks making you sound like a band from the 1950s. That’s bad, because the Beatles are from the 1950s, and as much as I appreciate their music, they spelt the word ‘beetle’ wrong, and that is unforgivable. I’m thinking ‘Fraternity’ or ‘Collective’. Sounds kind of sci fi. Oooh. Sci fi. Neeow!

I was going to add a ‘reason to be’, or for you fancy Francophile hipsters raison d’etre but you really don’t need a reason to hang around and do stuff with people, at least I never have. This whole thought process is probably some sort of psychological reaction prompted by the culture clash a good old country boy like me gets when he comes to the city. I’m probably threatened by all the buildings and dirty air and people, and foreign people and foreign cars and foreign basketballers. Is that a word? I don’t know. Damn foreigners. I trust most of them around here, because very few have moustaches, especially the women. That said, I’m determined to make this last, and form a kickass gang society in the Great Lakes and bust that unwanted flab faster than you can say 49.99!

A Fraction Too Much Factions?

Recently I decided to become more politically active. More politically active? You cry in mock indignation! How could you possibly get more politically active? Well, I reply, with the hint of a smug smile suppressed on my peeling lips, by joining a leftist political party!

Well, I’m a socialist, I reasoned, I may as well join the Australian Socialist Party and take it from there. Using the most supreme prism of the internet I started off for said party’s official website intent on bringing down the corrupt and moribund capitalist society I was part of…

However as soon as I search engined the words “Australian Socialist Party” I found myself in a curious dilemma. The Socialist Party (Australia) was a small and sadly impotent Trotskyist party mainly strong in Victoria. And we all know how things are in Victoria. Needless to say I looked elsewhere and came upon a veritable myriad of parties, organisations, lobby groups and ‘tendencies’ all claiming to be the most bestest and accurate Socialist parties in the land if not the world.

There’s the Socialist Equality Party, the Socialist Alliance and the Socialist Alternative to name a few. Now these fellows, like immature brethren constantly feud with each other, using perjoratives, superlatives and all sorts of other adjectives, verbs and nouns ending in -ist in a very public and seemingly endless argument.

Now it’s commonly accepted by all socialists that a union must be consecrated between the various factions of the left in a Popular Front, and that a long with a general strike, bring about the end of capitalism in a glorious velvet revolution. Velvet however is quite a rich material, and probably quite immoral to use when considering all the poor people and whatnot. Maybe a cotton revolution. Or a polyester one. I don’t know. The term ‘velvet revoulution’ comes from the bloodless shrugging off of the Stalinist regime in Czechoslovakia in the early 90s. I think it has something to do with the band ‘Velvet Underground’ who was touring around their at the time. Might not be though.

Socialist Clairty. Is it Too Much To Ask For?

 

Regardless of semantics and other mammals, this popular front looks nowhere near completion. At first glance it seems if the socialist movement is comprised primarily of disaffected middle-class hipsters living in the interior of places like Melbourne, drinking coffees, wearing little hats inside and growing their stubble in the half-light of a southern sun. That may be a stereotype, but it’s probably true.

So until the various leftist groups can put their differences aside, and compromise their hubris in the interests of  the common man, then their movement will be both impotent and irrelevant.

So what did I do? Me? I looked around, and settled finally on remaining indecisive, a loose cannon, a free agent, a most hypocritical individual collectivist. Then I complained, ate dinner and forgot about it.

Mandate Required *giggle*

Glorious Soviet Wisents (Bison) Fight For the People's Perverted Pleasure

Poles: An ethnic group that make up the majority of people in Poland, a nation in East Europe that borders, Germany, Spain, Russia and South Africa. The language spoken by Poles is Polish, from the Slavic Branch of the Indo-European Language family. The history of Poland is quite interesting, converted to Catholicism quite early into the…

Oh. Nefarious homophones.

Polls: Surveys taken by evil companies to show the glorious opinions of the working class population and whatnot. As technology and civilisation as a whole, has progressed to what is no doubt its zenith, and as we have developed glorious things like Facebook, Segways, and phones that according to their name possess above average intelligence, so our polling technology has grown more and more reliable.

 

A result of this extraordinary phenomenon, is that political parties now base much of the policies on Poles (like Lech Walesa). Politicians backflip, shimmy, tumble, jumpstep and shuffle to the latest polls as if they were the latest hits from that renowned communist entomologist Frank Sinatra.

There has been two reactions to this. Probably more. But two major ones I suppose, like there are only usually two answers to a question like “Are you fan of post-modernism”, ie. “Yes” and “What?” Direct democracy! Cry some, “Yay! Global networking! Facebook! Arab Spring! Twitter! People power!” Mob rule! Cry others. “Bread and circuses. Panda-ring to the masses. Unwashed hordes. Erosion of sensible government.”

Me? I don’t know, but one exception to this new rule is the issue of gay marriage. It seems that a fair majority of us Australians want homosexuals to have the same rights in regards to marriage as heterosexuals. It must be true. The polls said so. Funnily enough however, neither major political party has picked this issue up. Only our pinko lefty stalwarts the Greens, and God knows what fate will befall them in the fiery pits of Zoroastrian hell.

Both leaders, whom I have affectionately dubbed “Big Ears” and “Ranga”, claim to have a man date. They say it all the time, “Man date this, man date that, great big new tax, lies lies lies lies…” But is it true? Ranga has a spouse, Timothy, who seems to be a man, and I do imagine they might go out on dates every now and then, between meetings of the cabinet and hairdressing conventions. So yes I do believe Ranga when she says she has a mandate, and I often recommend some good restaurants, cinemas or secluded bush tracks for such things to take place. I am of course talking to the television, but there is a small chance, like in 1984 that they can record what you do and report back to the government, and while that chance remains, I will continue to speak to my beloved somewhat antiquated appliance. If this turns out not to be true, than I will feel somewhat embarrassed.

Big Ears, I don’t believe. Big Ears is a Liberal. Not a liberal. A Liberal. I’d explain the ideological difference, but that would take so long as to be both impractical and unnecessary. Fish.

Anyway, since Big Ears is a Liberal, and a somewhat conservative Christian, and those types prefer Holy Water and self-flagellation to the perfidious “Gays”, I doubt his frequent claims that he has a mandate, and refute them in no unnecessary terms daily, nightly and ever so rightly. He is however not in government, and has no access to the control systems of Big Brother and his surveillance network. I am sure Ranga and her henchmen note my loyalty however, and record it duly.

Furthermore Big Ears does not even possess a male spouse! The panache! Am I to assume, from his constant rhetoric that is having an affair with an unknown male of our species? No. Big Ears is a Good Christian, and is above such shenanigans. He must not understand the definition of this key word, and I will undertake to explain it to him, next time we meet.

Conclusion:

1. Hypocrisy and semantics plague our political system.

2. Homophones are fun.